Letters to the Editor
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Remember the 70's ?
I get the feeling you folks aren't old enough to remember the 70's. At the end of the 70's America was in a depressing malaise, not unlike we are in today thanks to W. Due to the Iranian hostage crisis and stagflation (look it up, that's where we are heading) due to high oil prices, the mood of the country was definately negative. Ronald Reagan's policies may not be satisfactory to your views, but he definately changed the mood of the country, took it in a new direction, and restored an optimism that was lacking (with a Democratically controlled congress). This is what Obama was speaking to....like it or not. I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980...my only Republican vote...so far. Jimmy Carter was not going to get my vote, as he was the one that got us in that funk....Hillary is incapable of the change that I believe Obama can lead. Wow...I am starting to get that deja vu feeling.
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I can see why everyone admires Reagan
It was Reagan who first came up with the idea that we could end all (illegal drug) addiction in America by blaming the potheads and getting rid of all the civil liberties that stood in the way of cracking down on the potheads.
That strategy was clearly successful, because heroin and cocaine addiction are virtually unheard of these days.
Just ask the citizens of northern Mexico how successful that strategy was.
Reagan drug policy was such a success that drug policy isn't even an issue in America any more.
That's reason enough to elevate the man to sainthood and require every living politician to bow down at his altar.
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I remember the '70s
College tuition was about $400 a semester. Stagflation was
mostly a media invention. The Iranian hostage "crises" was also
a media creation. The hostages themselves suffered but came out alive, unlike the 250 marines killed in Lebanon which the media just shrugged off because they couldn't blame a Democrat.
The bottom line on Reagan is that 200 million Americans just got ripped off.
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long-winded
What I see from these quotes is that it takes Obama too damn long to get to the point.
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yes, it's probably hard for the young'ns to imaging, but before Reagan, the only "homeless" you saw were usually
what we called "winos" and "bums" and "derelicts" (bums not ALWAYS being winos) ... there weren't many of them and they usually stayed in the bad parts of town. I'd never even seen a begger until I went to NYC when I was 10 (I lived in Santa Monica, a nice, but largely not exceptionally affluent town). We had bums who slept under the pier or huddled near the doorways of beach area liquor stores ... they pitiful... not scary, not particularly aggressive, just down on their luck, sad.
Imagine being able to use your parks, enter and exit the freeway and/or grocery parking lot without being acutely aware of the "less fortunate" even when not being actively solicited for funds.
I know it's hard to imagine, but before Reagan, the idea of just letting people rot and go cold, wet, and hungry just wasn't widely accepted. People actually felt some responsibility for the less fortunate. There was this thing they called "the social contract" -- Reagan changed all that.
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Here's proof that Obama was absolutely right
From today's New York Times:
RÍO BRAVO, Mexico — These days, it is easy to form the impression that a war is going on in Mexico. Thousands of elite troops in battle gear stream toward border towns and snake through the streets in jeeps with .50-caliber machine guns mounted on top while fighter jets from the Mexican Navy fly reconnaissance missions overhead.
Gun battles between federal forces and drug-cartel members carrying rocket-propelled-grenade launchers have taken place over the past two weeks in border towns like Río Bravo and Tijuana, with deadly results.
See, Reagan had a transformative effect on not just this country but also the countries that share our border.
Northern Mexico is never going to be the same.
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@rabblerouser
Stagflation was a media creation ? The hostage crises was a media creation ? Ignorance is bliss.
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Right On Athenian
The only thing you didn't mention was Reagan's union busting. He sumarily fired striking Air Traffic Controllers, allowed companies to get out of union obligations by deregulating and dismantling with no oversight. He gutted the budgets of any agency with oversight powers and left them virtually defenseless.
I believe him when he said he knew nothing about Iran Contra. Reagan was in the beginning stages of Alzheimers then. That was George Head Whore Bush's baby. It has all his fingerprints all over it, and he lied like his son denying any knowledge. The son you know has no knowledge, the father is evil.
If nothing else Reagan opened the door to the Bush dynasty and for that he will rot in hell.
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The Truth
Why can't these people just tell the truth? Why do they not have numbers and stats? Reagan screwed America big time. Just LOOK at the numbers. Yes, he smiled while he did it. I guess that's what America wants, a rapist who smiles. How encouraging.
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In a nutshell...
I should have mentioned this in my earlier post, but it slipped my mind. To me, Reagan and all he represents is encapsulated in a single anecdote. One of my former research committee members lived in DC when Reagan came into office. Reagan and his staff at the time decided that it was demoralizing to the nation, and inconsistent with the national character that there be so many homeless people visible sleeping on the steam grates around Washington, and especially around the buildings adjacent to the Mall. Their solution was to put spikes on the steam grates. To me this is the essence of "conservatism". It was an image of a solution. The underlying difficulty was still there. Those people, many of whom were likely Vietnam veterans, were still homeless. They didn't go away, but for the sake of the peace of mind of those who needed not to see them in such prominent locations, and to think things were okay, they were made to appear to go away. The image of the nation was restored, but the reality was not there. All that happened in reality is that those without homes were made that much colder. These were fellow citizens, and even a little comfort was denied them. How callous...how illusory...but how "conservative"...that was Reagan.